


Flowers

by Jinmukang



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Alfred is amazing, Angst, Batdad, Bruce Needs a Hug, Dick needs a hug, Dick's parents are amazing, Everyone Needs A Hug, Hurt/Comfort, Mother's Day, an excuse to write a soft batdad moment really, batfam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-01 07:27:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18795730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jinmukang/pseuds/Jinmukang
Summary: A mother's day fic."Just because it hurts, it doesn't mean it has to be painful."On the first Mother's Day without his mom, Dick mourned what he lost and realized what he found.





	Flowers

**Author's Note:**

> Happy mother's day everyone <3
> 
> Here, I gift you Dick angst.

There are some things that are just not easily forgotten. How to ride a bike, is one example, but there are other examples, ones much more significant than riding a bike. He will always remember the first time he put on the Nightwing suit. It was ugly as hell but the feeling of… accomplishment and self reliance was enough for him to puff out his chest in pride. There’s the first kiss he had with Barbara, the first girl he’s ever kissed. He was so nervous, he missed, but she missed too and they still laugh about it to this day. He remembers the first night with Kori, how he’d never felt more alive.

There’s the time he visited the manor to see a black haired boy named Jason stuffing his face with waffles, the time the words  _big brother_  applied to him for the first time in his life. He remembers crying that night, he’s always wanted a little brother.

He will never forget flying, there’s not a single moment where he’s hurtling himself through the air that he doesn’t remember. The weightlessness from swinging from one rope to another, the way butterflies flutter in his chest when gravity takes over. The feeling of hitting the net, rolling on the pavement, shooting another line; those moments will always remain so clear to him. Though, none of them compare to the first time he flew, the first time his mom took his hand and helped him up that three story ladder and told him that he is her little Robin, and today he gets his wings. He couldn’t have been more than five years old, yet the trust he had when he saw his father hanging on a trapeze handle in the middle of the course, hands outstretched, ready to catch, was so real. His mom showed him how to hold the handle without hurting his hands, she told him when to let go, when to kick. She looked worried, but his dad’s face was turning red from hanging upside down and Dick knew he had to go sooner rather than later.

He flailed, let go, missed, and landed on that net laughing so hard his chest hurt.

There are so many things he will never forget, though not all of them good. The anger he felt when Bruce died. The helplessness when Blockbuster blew up his house, the horror when Kori broke up with him for the worst reason, the shame for being a bad leader to the Outsiders, the fear when Jayson came back bad.

Though, there is one memory he knows, without a doubt, he will never forget. It was one of the hardest days on his life, though it was the day he also realized that he has a family in Bruce, in Alfred.

It was his first Mother’s Day without his mom.

-o-o-o-o-

Everything hurts, Dick decides. His eyes from the lack of sleep, his back from being shoved roughly into the lockers two days prior, his cheeks that he’s rubbed raw on his pillow, his heart from the lonely  _aching_  that will not go away. He didn’t think it would be this hard. Even back at the circus they didn’t make a big deal out of holidays. On Mother’s Day, his dad would come in and give his mom a kiss and a flower while Dick stumbled in with a tray of pancakes. She would laugh and hug them,  _he can still smell the strawberries in her hair_ , and then they continue the day like normal.

So it shouldn’t hurt this bad. It should be just like any other Sunday. He should be able to get out from his covers, get dressed, and be  _normal_ , except every time he thinks about getting up his limbs seem to grow ten times heavier.

The last day of school before the weekend had to be the hardest he’s ever had. He’s never hated school since Bruce took him in, yes there were the elitist bullies and teachers that tried to kiss up to him to get to Bruce, but he has friends there and he loves his classes. It’s fun to go out and become a normal teenager, instead of coming home and being Master Dick, instead of going to parties and being cute little Richard, instead of jumping out into the night and being Robin. Dick, that’s all he is at school. Or what he thought so.

It doesn’t matter where you go to school or what grade you’re in, one or two teachers  _will_  have projects and activities for any holidays. Dick was lucky to end up with teachers of his own that had stupid projects like “Write a letter to your mom!” or “when you’re finished with the assignment, come plant a seed in a paper cup of cheap dirt from Walmart and give it to your mom when you get home!”

He could feel the stares piercing his neck, sending shivers up his spine and curling his toes. Even the teachers were starting at him, looks full of pity as if they were regretting even making the assignments. That day he wasn’t Dick, he was the poor ward of Bruce Wayne whose parents died tragically at the circus. He was motherless, parentless. The teachers couldn’t even tell him to write to his dad instead, though one did suggest he do the activity for Bruce instead, and  _that_  was something Dick didn’t want to think about. Brice isn’t his dad, or his mom, or any parent. He’s just a guardian, that’s it.

During lunch, he sits with a girl named Barbara. That’s the only time he felt normal that day, because she was having a hard time too. She doesn’t have a mom as well, so they were both miserable that day. At least she got to cross out the words “MOM!” on that stupid cup of dirt and write “dad”. They were in the middle of avoiding the topic when a group of kids came over. Dick instantly recognized them as the children of various wealthy families around Gotham. They thought they were so much better because they had money, and now they thought they were better because they had their parents.

“Hey Dickhead, who did you write that letter to in English?”

“I bet he wrote it to one of Bruce Wayne’s girlfriends.”

“No, I bet he wrote it to Bruce himself.”

“That’s so gross!”

Usually, Dick would fight back, but this time, something heavy settled in his chest and he quickly got up and left before he could sink to the ground from the weight and cry.

The rest of the day he was made fun of because poor Dick Grayson has no mother.

The light in his room suddenly flicks on and he hisses and buries himself deeper into the covers. He can hear the gentle footsteps of Alfred and he wants to groan. What time is it?

“Master Dick, I do hope you’re not planning on staying in bed  _all_  day.”

Dick mumbles out a response that even he didn’t understand. Alfred let’s out a tut and walks up to the bed and throws off the covers. Dick curls up as the cool air hits his body. “You missed breakfast,” Alfred says casually as he walks to the window to open the curtains, “lunch is in one hour. I expect you to be there.”

The words  _or else_  went unsaid. Dick doesn’t know what Alfred would do to him if he skips out on two out of three meals, but Dick does know he doesn’t want to find out. Whatever the case, Alfred leaves with a quick goodbye and reminder to be at lunch, he leaves the door open.

Dick groans.

Thirty minutes later, Dick stumbles down the stairs and into the dining room somewhat put together. His clothes are from the day before and his hair is sort of a mess, but Alfred can’t complain. At least Dick got up.

He sits down at the dining table and Alfred gives him a exasperated look before he sets down a cup of coffee in front of him. Bruce is across the table, sipping on his own life-bringing-juice and reading the morning newspaper. The smell of something cooking wafted in from the kitchen.

“Good afternoon, Dick,” Bruce says and Dick grunts in response.

There’s the ruffling of paper as Bruce turns a page and Dick finds himself slowly sinking so his head on laying on the table. He’s so tired. He hasn’t gotten a wink of sleep for the last two days, with Robin and his own mind keeping him up. He’s so, so tired.

He hasn’t noticed his eyes slipped closed until Alfred placed a steaming plate next to his head. He jerks up and Alfred  _almost_  snorts and goes to place a plate by Bruce.

“Thank you, Alfred,” Bruce says. He pokes his head above the newspaper and looks at Dick with one eyebrow raised.

Dick clears his throat. “Ah yeah, thanks.”

“You’re very welcome, sirs. Now, eat up, we have places to be today.”

Brice nods and puts the newspaper down and Dick has to double take at what he sees. If Dick thought his own hair was messy, Bruce’s hair is completely untamed and wild. There’s bags under his eyes, almost illuminating his dark blue eyes. He looks spent, like he has no energy left to even pick up his fork and start eating. The meal on Bruce’s plate also throws Dick through the loop. Crepes. Little pastry versions of tortillas rolled up around cream cheese and piled up with bananas, blueberries, and strawberries, topped off with a mountain of whipped cream and blackberry syrup. To the side is scrambled eggs cooked a perfect golden, glistening. Dick whips his head down to his own plate and just stares as the exact same meal meats his sight.

He was expecting a sandwich.

Then, the most crazy thing happens; Bruce sets his mug down and stabs his fork into the crepe.

“Master Dick, is your meal not to your liking?” Alfred suddenly asks, the corner of his mouth is lifted quizzingly, like Alfred knows something Dick doesn’t. Which is a very possible thing to happen. Dick has discovered in the few months he’s lived in the manor that Alfred knows all, sees all.

Then, something clicks in his head. Bruce was drinking coffee, in the middle of the day. Alfred made a very breakfast-y meal for lunch. Bruce looks like he just woke up.

Alfred let them  _both_  sleep in.

Dick would wonder why, but his stomach growls. “Um, no, thank you Alfred. It looks good.”

Alfred hums in content and Dick turns down and takes a small bite of the very sugary meal that Bruce would never eat normally. It’s delicious—of course it is, Alfred made it—and soon the meal is gone. Bruce’s plate is halfway finished and Bruce stands up to leave, excusing himself. Alfred sighs and collects the dishes. “You best be off and get ready,” Alfred says, “we leave in thirty.”

“For what?”

A sad look droops on Alfred’s face. “We’re going to visit your mother’s.”

-o-o-o-o-

When Dick sees Bruce all freshened up and in a nice suit, Dick almost regrets slipping on a somewhat clean t-shirt and basketball shorts. Alfred is also in a suit, and he gives Dick a disappointed look but Dick ignores it and clutches his backpack a little closer to him. When he was in the circus, he never had a suit. All he had was what he could stuff in a truck next to his parents’ meager belongings. His parents never cared for makeup and perfume and nice dresses, and Dick didn’t feel right visiting them all spruced up and wealthy.

In Alfred’s hands are two bundles of flowers and Dick… felt something tear in his chest. One had beautiful hydrangea flowers of all colors mixed with the most perfect looking roses Dick has ever seen and the other… the other had simple snapdragons and baby’s breath. Dick doesn’t know how Alfred knew that those are… were his mother’s favorite, but it made him almost want to crumple down and cry right there.

He remembers, when he was very little, his mother and father took him out to buy him a gift for his birthday at a local retail store. He was looking at the Legos and action figures when his mother gasped and walked into the garden center where they had an assortment of colorful snapdragons.

“Dicky, baby look,” his mother said and kneeled down next to the flowers. His father was chuckling as Dick curiously and skeptically waddled towards his mom and stood next to her.

“What?” He asked.

“Watch this,” she said. Her grin was so wide it was practically splitting her face. She reached forward and placed her hands around the flowers stem and gently pinched. The flower seemed to open its mouth like a dragon. “Hello Dick! I’m Mr Flower!” She said in a gravely monster voice, moving the flower as if it were talking. Dick laughed and she helped him place his own fingers on the flower and test it out for himself.

“These are mommy’s favorite,” his dad said and knelt down next to them to playfully pinch the flower himself. “She likes childish things.”

“Simple. I like simple things,” she corrected. “I like baby’s breath and that isn’t a childish flower.”

“It has "baby” in the name, honeybutt.“

"Oh be quiet.”

In the end, Dick chose to take home a pot of red snapdragons and planted them outside their trailer. He wonders if they’re still there in that festival park clearing, or of they’ve died too.

Walking to the Wayne graveyard is like walking to your own grave. It’s filled with morbidity and a weird gut wrenching feeling that makes Dick want to curl his arms over his stomach and fight the urge to vomit. It’s not like he hasn’t visited the yard before, it just hurts a whole lot today for some unexplainable reason.

They follow along a path carefully constructed into the grass, flowers and bushes line the sides and beautiful trees are planted so it’s almost like they’re walking through a mystical forest, but Dick isn’t appreciating the view, he’s dreading the moment he sees the first gray colored stone.

And it doesn’t take long. The Wayne’s have been around for a very long time. There are gravestones dating back to the 19th century, the graveyard is massive, it’s almost the size of a normal city’s graveyard actually, except the graves here are so aged. All of them except a few new ones.

They walk to those new ones.

Bruce stops in front of the two largest ones, stone in perfect condition and flowers already sitting at the feet, looking only a day old. Alfred hands the more elegant flowers to Bruce and Bruce silently bends down to replace the old flowers on Martha Wayne’s Grave. He steps back and tightens his jaw, looking down at the grave stone with his face half obscured in shadow. Alfred quietly walks over to Dick and holds out the other bundle of flowers.

Dick looks away over towards the newest additions of the graveyard sat. Everyone here are Wayne’s, but these two are different, two Grayson’s in a sea of someone else’s family. He thinks about how wrong that is. His father wanted to be sent off in a boat on the river, set alight, like the Vikings, he joked. His mother wanted her ashes spread over the white cliffs of Dover and into the wind, so she could be with the ocean forever. Dick doesn’t think he told anyone that when  _it_  happened. He was too busy mourning, so when Bruce offered to have his parents buried in the Wayne Graveyard, Dick didn’t refuse. He should have.

There’s flowers on his parents graves and he wonders who put them there because he certainly hasn’t. Alfred can’t have done it himself, he has the manor and the gardens and the horses and so many things to take care of, he would have no time to make a trip to the graveyard to place flowers on the graves of a not even adopted child’s dead parents. Dick is just a ward. Why would Alfred do that?

Alfred makes a noise and Dick turns to Alfred’s face instantly falls when he sees Dick. Dick wonders why until he feels a streak of water drip down his cheek and onto the group and beneath him. Alfred walks forward and embraces Dick in a bone crushing hug and Dick can only clutch at Alfred’s suit jacket and try to keep his shoulders from jolting from the sobs trying to claw themselves out.

“You’re okay, my boy,” Alfred whispers, “you’re okay.”

Dick doesn’t feel okay. He feels broken, like a piece of him was torn out from his chest and buried in those graves too. He’s feels torn and there’s no way to put himself back together. He shouldn’t be here. He should be on his way to Berlin, or Rome, or Cleveland, or Hong Kong with the rest of the circus, practicing his flips and the show with his parents. He should be handing his mother pancakes in bed and his dad should be offering flowers. Not this. Not this terrible aloneness where he’s the one placing the flowers down to a person decaying six feet under the ground.

The first hiccuping sob escapes his throat and then the dam bursts and he can’t control it. It hurts so much, and he doesn’t understand why. He’s been here before, he’s sat in front of those graves for hours talking away about school and Wally and Superman and his mission in Amsterdam or somewhere else. He’s cried, but it hasn’t felt like Harley bludgeoned him in the chest. Why does it hurt so much?

Another warm body wraps itself around Dick, as if it were trying to help keep Dick together as Dick falls apart.

“I have this,” a deep voice says and Dick finds himself being lowered to the ground and gathered into the arms of none other than Bruce Wayne. Alfred steps back, holding the bundle of snapdragons and babies breath in reverence.

Bruce has never shown any kind of… affection or emotion like this towards Dick before. There’s never been a hug, never anything like that. When Robin does well, it’s a ruffle of hair or a pat on the back. When Dick goes to bed it’s a simple wave, when he leaves to school it’s a nod, never a hug. Nothing like this.

Dick is weeping something ugly, he’s clutching to Bruce like he’s the last thing keeping Dick from sinking into the dirt himself, pressing his head against his chest and probably staining the suit with his snot, spit, and tears. He thinks he’s screaming, or he may just be mumbling incoherently, he doesn’t know at this point.

It hurts so, so much. There’s no way to describe the pain. The hand carding through his hair doesn’t help, the arms, the chest, the soothing words, they aren’t helping at all, but soon, Dick finds himself calming down, his breaths evening out, his eyes starting to see again though the tears.

“That’s right, chum,” Bruce is saying, Dick wonders how long he’s been talking, “calm down, even breaths.”

Dick swallows and does as he’s told, he closes his eyes and let’s one last tear slip out.

“Does it ever stop hurting?” Dick whispers.

Bruce sighs and clutches onto Dick tighter for a second. Dick doesn’t know what to make of it. He’s never seen this side of Bruce Wayne.

“No,” Bruce says, not one to lie. Dick can feel that word shoot into his soul as clearly as he can feel the rumble in Bruce’s chest as he speaks. Bruce lost his parents, they were shot right in front of him when he was younger than Dick. He’s never stopped hurting, never stopped feeling that agony, that emptiness, those should haves, those what ifs. If the  _Batman_  is still aching, what hope does Dick have? “But that’s not a bad thing, chum.”

“I don’t understand,” Dick says.

Bruce sighs. “When it stops hurting, it means you’ve forgotten them.”

Dick closes his mouth and thinks about those words for a few seconds, and thinks some more, trying to make sense of them.

“But, it doesn’t have to be… painful,” Bruce continues, “you keep their memory and do something with it. You don’t have to be alone, Dick, you have me and Alfred here to help you. Do you understand?”

“I… think so.”

“Good. How does ice cream sound?”

Dick looks up from his nestled position and gave Bruce a confused look. “What?”

Bruce smiles, and Dick can tell that it’s genuine… because he’s never seen that smile before. “Ice cream. It’ll cheer us all up.”

Dick is about to nod. Ice cream sounds heavenly, maybe he can convince Bruce to take him to Cold Stone uptown where they have a special limited edition sour patch flavored ice cream and he can get one of those waffle bowls… but he looks past Bruce’s shoulder and he sees the gravestone with his mother’s name carved into it and he sucks in a breath, trying to keep the tears from escaping again.

“Yeah, but… In a second.”

Bruce hums and helps Dick return to his feet, seemingly already knowing what Dick was thinking. Dick wouldn’t be surprised if he did, he is the best detective in the world after all. Dick walks over to to his backpack he has brought with him and digs into it, he pushes aside the books and binders and stops at a little cup of dirt he had carefully placed inside a few days prior. His teacher said he didn’t have to plant a flower seed, but Dick just felt the need to. He takes it out and holds it in his hands as if it were the most precious thing in the world, despite it being a simple cup that held a daisy seed.

He smiles at Alfred and takes the bundle of flowers and walks over to his mother’s grave. He sets down the snapdragons and babies breath and picks up the old flowers before he digs out a small handful of dirt and places the daisy seed inside, covering it up carefully.

It hurts, but it doesn’t have to be painful. What a strange sentence that makes complete sense. He looks behind him and stands up, sniffling as a few stubborn tears try to break through.

“Okay,” he says, his voice breaking only slightly, “can we go to Cold Stone?”

Bruce smiles and brings an arm around Dick’s shoulders, bringing him in for a half hug. “Of course, chum.”

Somehow, that daisy plant grows and flourishes over the years. The leaves are a pure white, the center a bright, golden yellow. The year after that, Dick plants some red snapdragons, the year after, some daffodils, and it continues.

But that first mother’s day, Dick doesn’t ever forget. Even now, as an adult with too many siblings to number, with so many years in a different family that they outnumber the time he’s spent with his first, the hurt never goes away. Bruce was right, it doesn’t ever stop hurting, but something about going out and living his life, something about planting a new flower or weeding around old ones, or talking with Jason or joking with Cass, he finds that it isn’t painful.

“Happy Mother’s Day,” Dick says, leaving a bundle of flowers on his mother’s grave. He stands up and pats Damian on the shoulder and ruffles Tim’s hair.

“Now, who wants ice cream?”

**Author's Note:**

> Come join me on my Batfam discord, which this fic was written for!!! If you're interested, message me on my Tumblr @jinmukangwrites <3


End file.
